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#388 Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science - Bite Mark Evidence · Wrongful Conviction

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Speaker 1: Hey, folks, Kate Judson here, I'm a lawyer and the
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Speaker 1: executive director of the Center for Integrity and Forensic Sciences.
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Speaker 1: We're back with an episode of Junk Science, a series
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Speaker 1: we first released in twenty twenty. Each episode highlights ways
0:16
Speaker 1: that inaccurate or misinterpreted forensics can result in a wrongful conviction.
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Speaker 1: This week's episode focuses on bitemark evidence, a forensic specialty
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Speaker 1: that is thankfully falling out of favor as more and
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Speaker 1: more courts realize its shortcomings. But that doesn't mean that
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Speaker 1: it's totally gone or that the legal system doesn't still
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Speaker 1: feel its influence. To me and others familiar with bitemark evidence,
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Speaker 1: the name doctor Michael West will ring some bells. He's
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Speaker 1: an infamous bitemark analyst whose questionable assertions in court have
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Speaker 1: led to many wrongful convictions. He claimed that he could
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Speaker 1: find bitemarks and other marks on skin that no one
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Speaker 1: else could find using alternative light source photography, thing that
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Speaker 1: is unsupported by scientific evidence. This concept is another dimension
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Speaker 1: of what you'll hear discussed in this episode that increasingly
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Speaker 1: sophisticated methods of evidence collection don't do a thing to
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Speaker 1: ensure accurate interpretation. Only By revealing and changing the underlying
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Speaker 1: systemic problems, can we ensure reliability.
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Speaker 2: Imagine this. You're at your house. You're standing at the
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Speaker 2: stove making dinner. You hear a knock at the door.
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Speaker 2: It's the police. They ask you your name. They've been
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Speaker 2: looking for you. The first thing you think is, oh, no,
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Speaker 2: something must have happened to a friend or someone in
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Speaker 2: my family. An officer looks you in the eye. They
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Speaker 2: need to ask you some questions. What is it? What happened?
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Speaker 2: They won't tell you. You'll need to go down to
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Speaker 2: the police station. You agree to go with them, and
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Speaker 2: you ask them over and over what's the problem. You're
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Speaker 2: putting a small windowless room and you're very anxious, and
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Speaker 2: you're told you wait here. Two plain closed detectives eventually
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Speaker 2: come in. One sits across from you, or a rickety
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Speaker 2: table separates you from him. The other comes to your
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Speaker 2: side of the table and he sits so close to
2:30
Speaker 2: you that his knee is touching yours. He quickly begins
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Speaker 2: accusing you of raping and murdering someone. He says a
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Speaker 2: name that you recognize. It's your ex who you haven't
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Speaker 2: been in contact with for years. The one sitting closest
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Speaker 2: to you, tells you the murder happened last night and
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Speaker 2: that the only way you can help yourself is to
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Speaker 2: just admit what you did. He asked you where you
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Speaker 2: were yesterday. At first, it's not easy to remember the
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Speaker 2: mundane details of the past day. You were just told
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Speaker 2: that your ex was murdered. But you take a deep
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Speaker 2: breath and you try to focus. You were at work
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Speaker 2: all day. On your way home, you went to the
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Speaker 2: grocery store. Then you stopped and had a bureau with
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Speaker 2: some friends at a local bar. Then you got gas
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Speaker 2: at the gas station. You ran into one of your neighbors.
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Speaker 2: You can remember sitting there across from those detectives at
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Speaker 2: least nine alibi witnesses. You tell this to the detectives,
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Speaker 2: and this gets them even more pissed. They say, look,
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Speaker 2: we don't believe you. We know you killed this woman.
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Speaker 2: They tell you that the victim has bite marks all
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Speaker 2: over her neck, on her shoulder, her inner thigh, and
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Speaker 2: her arm. They tell you that the killer left those
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Speaker 2: bite marks that they can determine who committed this crime
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Speaker 2: just by taking a dental impression of their teeth and
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Speaker 2: matching it to the bite marks on the victim. And
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Speaker 2: if you're so innocent, they say, if this is there's
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Speaker 2: some big mix up and you didn't really do this,
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Speaker 2: let us just take an impression of your teeth. Fine,
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Speaker 2: let's do it. After more forceful accusations, they let you
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Speaker 2: sit there, and sit there, and sit there. A few
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Speaker 2: hours later, they send a man into the room wearing
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Speaker 2: a white lab coat, and he certainly looks the part
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Speaker 2: of a dentist. He takes out two metal bite plates
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Speaker 2: and fills them with a silly putty like substance. He
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Speaker 2: pushes these cold trays into your mouth and tells you
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Speaker 2: to bite down. The putty tastes like plastic. It hugs
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Speaker 2: your teeth, then quickly firms up and drives. Then it's
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Speaker 2: pulled from your mouth and there is a perfect impression.
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Speaker 2: The cops come back in and they tell you can
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Speaker 2: leave the police station, but they also tell you you're not
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Speaker 2: to leave town. Three sleepless nights later, you're at your house,
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Speaker 2: laying awake in bed, and you're really overcome by anxiety.
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Speaker 2: You're wondering, do I need an attorney or does that
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Speaker 2: make it look like I may have actually done something wrong?
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Speaker 2: How do I act what am I supposed to do?
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Speaker 2: And then your dog starts barking. This time they don't knock.
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Speaker 2: Your front door is blown off its hinges by a
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Speaker 2: swat team, and before you know what's happening, you are
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Speaker 2: on the ground. You can clearly hear one of these
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Speaker 2: cops yell at you don't fucking move. Your face is
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Speaker 2: being pushed into the carpet. You're being handcuffed. You're told
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Speaker 2: you're being charged with the rape and murder of your
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Speaker 2: ex who you haven't seen or spoken to in years.
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Speaker 2: At your trial, the prosecution gets two experts in bite marks,
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Speaker 2: called odentologists, an impressive sounding title for a forensic dentist,
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Speaker 2: and they explain how the ridges, angles, peaks, and valleys
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Speaker 2: of your teeth, these unique characteristics, perfectly matched with the
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Speaker 2: bite marks on the victim. They say things to the
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Speaker 2: jury that sound really impressive. There's a one in a
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Speaker 2: million chances that these bite marks are anyone else's but
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Speaker 2: the defendants, they say, and we know that to a
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Speaker 2: degree of scientific certainty. The jury seems to be completely
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Speaker 2: buying this, and why not? It all sounds so rational,
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Speaker 2: so infallible. You're thinking, I'm really screwtier but you know
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Speaker 2: you're innocent. Countless innocent men and women have lived this
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Speaker 2: horrific nightmare. Their wrongful convictions are based on evidence presented
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Speaker 2: by odentologists, the quote unquote scientific experts and bite mark evidence.
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Speaker 2: I'm Josh Duben, civil rights and criminal defense attorney, an
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Speaker 2: innocent ambassador to the Innocence Project in New York. Today
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Speaker 2: on wrongful conviction junk science, We're going to explore bitemark evidence.
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Speaker 2: Like other forms of junk science used in criminal trials,
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Speaker 2: bitemark evidence does not benefit crime victims or their loved ones,
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Speaker 2: So why is it treated like credible science. It turns
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Speaker 2: out that the charade of bitemark evidence is actually older
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Speaker 2: than the United States. On April thirtieth, sixteen ninety two,
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Speaker 2: a reverend by the name of George Burrows was arrested
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Speaker 2: and accused of torturing young women into witchcraft. It was
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Speaker 2: alleged that it would inflict various forms of physical harm
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Speaker 2: on them, pinching, strangling, and yes, biting them. The evidence
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Speaker 2: against Burrows was really thin, but the only physical evidence
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Speaker 2: where the alleged bitemarks that the prosecution claimed his teeth
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Speaker 2: left on the flesh of his victims at his trial,
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Speaker 2: Reverend Burroughs was pulled by the face around the courtroom
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Speaker 2: and his mouth was pride open. A stick was used
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Speaker 2: to point out the unique characteristics of Burrow's teeth, the peaks,
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Speaker 2: the angles of his molars, and then they were compared
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Speaker 2: to what the court was told were bite marks on
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Speaker 2: the young girls. Burrows was convicted and publicly hanged. While
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Speaker 2: he stood on a ladder awaiting the tightening of a
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Speaker 2: noose around his neck, he prayed. He recited the Lord's Prayer,
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Speaker 2: and a collective gasp, like a creeping wave, rolled through
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Speaker 2: the crowd that had gathered to watch his hanging. Because
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Speaker 2: the Lord's Prayer was considered impossible for a witch, and
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Speaker 2: so bitemark evidence was born in the bloodthirsty hysteria of
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Speaker 2: the Salem witch trials, Burrow's recitation of the Lord's Prayer
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Speaker 2: should have been a sign that something was wrong with
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Speaker 2: his conviction, that he wasn't a witch after all, Because
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Speaker 2: it turns out the angry, frenzied mob that was so
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Speaker 2: quick to accuse, convict, and hang George Burrows had in
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Speaker 2: fact executed an innocent man. Twenty years after he was
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Speaker 2: put to death, George Burrows was declared innocent. He was
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Speaker 2: in another town altogether on the knights that the victims
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Speaker 2: were allegedly tortured. George Burrows hadn't beten anyone at all.
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Speaker 2: That entire show that was put on in that courtroom,
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Speaker 2: the circus of forcing his mouth open was nothing more
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Speaker 2: than performance masquerading as signs. And yet bite mark evidence
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Speaker 2: is still being used in courtrooms across the country to
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Speaker 2: convict innocent people of crimes they did not commit.
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Speaker 3: Every single case that my department has gotten involved in
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Speaker 3: has ended up in reversal of the conviction, or exclusion
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Speaker 3: of the evidence, or withdrawal of the evidence because it's
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Speaker 3: so grossly unreliable.
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Speaker 2: To tell us more about bitemark evidence, we have Chris
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Speaker 2: Fabricn from the Innocence Project here with us today. Throughout
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Speaker 2: his twenty year legal career, Chris has worked on countless
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Speaker 2: cases in which innocent men and women spent decades in
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Speaker 2: prison because of bitemark evidence.
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Speaker 3: We at the Innocence Project had an agenda about eliminating
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Speaker 3: the use of bitemark evidence in criminal trials.
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Speaker 2: Chris, there's a case from the nineteen seventies, the People
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Speaker 2: versus Marx, which I believe is the first modern instance
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Speaker 2: of a bitemark on human skin being presented as evidence.
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Speaker 2: Can you tell us about this case?
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Speaker 3: So, Walter Marx was a weekend tenant of a woman
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Speaker 3: named Lovey Brazanski, and so the first time since he
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Speaker 3: had had this lease, he did not spend the night
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Speaker 3: on the weekend, and that same weekend the murder victim
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Speaker 3: turned up dead. Police discouvers the body on Sunday afternoon,
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Speaker 3: and they noticed that the victims nose had been indelicately
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Speaker 3: put bitten off, and the cartilage of the nose on
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Speaker 3: the victim's face had left the impression of what appeared
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Speaker 3: to be tooth marks. Mister Marx looked good for it,
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Speaker 3: but there wasn't really any evidence apart from the fact
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Speaker 3: that he didn't show up for his usual weekend stay.
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Speaker 3: So there was a group of dentists who had had
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Speaker 3: some history with identifying human bodies through dental records, which
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Speaker 3: is a totally different, unrelated subdiscipline of forensic dentistry. But
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Speaker 3: they had had some interest in bitemark evidence and had
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Speaker 3: been kind of looking for the right case to essentially
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Speaker 3: try this out. And interestingly, mister Mark spent four months
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Speaker 3: in jail on a contempt charge resisting the court order
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Speaker 3: to have a mold taken of his teeth. Eventually he
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Speaker 3: gave up and allowed the mold to be taken.
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Speaker 2: Now, let me stop you. There didn't like six or
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Speaker 2: eight weeks pass before they were able to compare the
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Speaker 2: impression on Walter Mark's teeth to the victim. And hadn't
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Speaker 2: she already been buried and they had to exhume her body?
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Speaker 4: Yeah.
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Speaker 3: You know what's interesting about that is that they still
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Speaker 3: do exclamations and do that type of powdern matching today.
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Speaker 2: Doesn't common sense just dictate that when you bury a
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Speaker 2: human body, the skin changes, it starts to wear and decompose.
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Speaker 2: It just seems like intuitive that if there was a
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Speaker 2: bite mark and you actually could compare a teeth to it,
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Speaker 2: that it wouldn't be, you know, worth anything to make
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Speaker 2: that comparison after a body had been buried for that long.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, precisely right.
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Speaker 3: You're asking the critical questions that no court in the
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Speaker 3: country asked for forty years, State after state after state
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Speaker 3: after state cite it back to the Walter Marx decision
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Speaker 3: as evidence of not just that it's amissibility, but if
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Speaker 3: it's signed tipic reliability.
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Speaker 2: This becomes the precedent. This becomes well, hey, bite mark
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Speaker 2: evidence was accepted in the Marx case, you should accept
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Speaker 2: it here, and all of a sudden, it just starts
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Speaker 2: to get accepted. How is that even possible?
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Speaker 4: Because it worked.
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Speaker 3: You know, the criminal justice system is an efficient, eating
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Speaker 3: and killing machine of largely poor people of color, and
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Speaker 3: whatever facilitates that process, it's going to be used as
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Speaker 3: long as courts admitted and bite mark evidence was introduced
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Speaker 3: as evidence. The court admitted it, it got upheld on appeal,
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Speaker 3: so it was good to go.
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Speaker 2: So bite mark evidence was officially accepted in the Marx
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Speaker 2: case and now it has been ingested, if you will,
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Speaker 2: into the criminal justice system. But it became acceptable to
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Speaker 2: the general public because of the Ted Bundy case.
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Speaker 4: Right, yeah, you know.
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Speaker 3: I mean I sometimes say that Ted Bundy ended up
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Speaker 3: having many more posthumous victims than any other serial killer
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Speaker 3: that we can be aware of, because that his trial
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Speaker 3: led to the widespread use of bite mark evidence all
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Speaker 3: over the country.
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Speaker 2: So for those of our listeners who don't know, but
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Speaker 2: I feel like it's safe to say, most dude, Ted
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Speaker 2: Bundy was one of the most infamous serial killers in
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Speaker 2: US history, and his murder trial was actually the first
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Speaker 2: criminal trial to ever be televised in the United States. Now,
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Speaker 2: there was overwhelming evidence that proved Bundy was guilty of killing, raping,
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Speaker 2: and torturing these young women from Florida State University. And
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Speaker 2: they had eyewitnessed testimony of him, you know, comings in
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Speaker 2: the murder scene, leaving the murder scene. They had things
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Speaker 2: that he had stolen from the homes of these women.
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Speaker 2: And there was sort of like a beltz in suspenders
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Speaker 2: moment where they wanted to make sure they did everything
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Speaker 2: they could to prove his guilt. And they spent two
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Speaker 2: full days presenting this bitemark testimony in the case. Why
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Speaker 2: do you think that it is, Chris.
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Speaker 3: People are hungry for every piece of news they could
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Speaker 3: possibly get about Ted Bundy.
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Speaker 4: Everybody believed he's guilty.
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Speaker 3: The only physical evidence in that case was the bitemark,
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Speaker 3: so it was touted as you know, bite marks are
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Speaker 3: the thing that finally brought Bundy down. And after Ted
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Speaker 3: Bundy was convicted and using bitemark evidence that really just
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Speaker 3: exploded all over the country.
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Speaker 2: There's something about teeth and dentists that gets associated with reliability, right,
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Speaker 2: I mean, we've all heard about dental records being used
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Speaker 2: to identify crime victims accident victims, and that sign seems
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Speaker 2: to be real, But that's very different from saying that
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Speaker 2: a bitemark can be used to identified the person that
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Speaker 2: did the biting.
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Speaker 3: Right, The identification of human remains through dental records is
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Speaker 3: kind of a trojan horse for the forensic dentistry crowd
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Speaker 3: to get into court on bitemark evidence, and I've seen
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Speaker 3: it firsthand in lots of dentists. Conflating these two subdisciplines
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Speaker 3: is the same thing. You identify people by their teeth,
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Speaker 3: and you identify people by the bite marks those teeth make,
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Speaker 3: and that kind of makes sense until you actually think
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Speaker 3: about it. The two techniques have nothing whatsoever to do
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Speaker 3: with each other.
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Speaker 2: So why doesn't bitemark evidence work? Why isn't it reliable?
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Speaker 3: Bite marks are totally different because you're interpreting an injury
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Speaker 3: on skin that has almost nothing to do with teeth
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Speaker 3: at all, And so all of the little individual, theoretically
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Speaker 3: unique differences in teeth that you're pointing out, the cracks,
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Speaker 3: the bevels, the crookedness or the straightness or the missing
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Speaker 3: tooth or this or that that you can think of,
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Speaker 3: that would be different from mouth to mouth or not
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Speaker 3: reflected in the skin whatsoever. But even if you can
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Speaker 3: say with some confidence that these two things can be associated,
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Speaker 3: then you have to answer the question is it one
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Speaker 3: in ten or is it one in ten million people
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Speaker 3: that might also match. So in DNA, we know you
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Speaker 3: know fairly well how many other people are likely to
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Speaker 3: share your DNA. We've done the statistical population frequencies to
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Speaker 3: know and to believe that the human DNA is unique.
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Speaker 4: We haven't done that with fingerprints or shoes.
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Speaker 3: Or tires or firearms, and we certainly have not done
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Speaker 3: those with teeth.
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Speaker 2: So you're saying that a bitemark and a suspect's tooth
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Speaker 2: might appear to match, but many other people's teeth might
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Speaker 2: match that same bite mark, so it's not a unique match.
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Speaker 3: Right, So you layer those problems on top of bite
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Speaker 3: marks where you're trying to interpret an injury in human skin,
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Speaker 3: where all skin is different, right, old people, young people,
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Speaker 3: thin people, heavy people. All these things make a difference
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Speaker 3: in individual skin characteristics. If you are flexing at the
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Speaker 3: time you were bitten, the bite mark's going to look
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Speaker 3: one way. If your arm was relaxed at the same time,
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Speaker 3: it would look a different way. Right, And if you
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Speaker 3: think about somebody who may be lost one hundred pounds
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Speaker 3: recently and has saggy skin as a result, right, the
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Speaker 3: way the bite mark is going to appear on that
18:17
Speaker 3: person's going to be different than somebody who's you know,
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Speaker 3: puffy from drinking, right, and their skin's all taut and round,
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Speaker 3: you know, and you try and bite into that and
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Speaker 3: you're just going to engage a few teeth. So every
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Speaker 3: time that the same teeth make a bite mark, it's
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Speaker 3: going to look different every single time, depending on the
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Speaker 3: angle of the body, what type of struggle it was,
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Speaker 3: what type of person that you're dealing with. All of
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Speaker 3: these things are variables that change every single time. So
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Speaker 3: it's just fundamental speculation, you know, just guesswork that's proffered
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Speaker 3: as science.
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Speaker 4: Very very persuasive, but totally guesswork.
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Speaker 2: I read that someone can be missing their front teeth
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Speaker 2: bite down on human skin, and the bite mark can
18:58
Speaker 2: make it appears if they actually have two front teeth,
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Speaker 2: and that someone would two front teeth that are fully
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Speaker 2: intact and bite down and the bitemark can look like
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Speaker 2: they are missing two front teeth.
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Speaker 3: Can really get the skin to say anything that you
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Speaker 3: needed to say, you can match a bitemark to almost
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Speaker 3: any suspect.
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Speaker 2: But if this evidence is so unreliable, then what exactly
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Speaker 2: makes these odentologists, these bitemark experts so convincing that they're
19:25
Speaker 2: able to convince a judge or a jury of an
19:29
Speaker 2: innocent person's guilt.
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Speaker 3: So you'll see these experts that are testifying and using
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Speaker 3: a lot of scientific terminology plus a lot of obscure
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Speaker 3: dental terminology, and the testimony just becomes opaque, and you
19:42
Speaker 3: just kind of turn off your brain and your critical thinking.
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Speaker 3: And the experts sounds so persuasive because they have ten thousand.
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Speaker 4: Different ways to record a bite mark.
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Speaker 3: Some of them go so far as harvesting tissue they
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Speaker 3: call it from dead bodies and mounting them on silicone rings,
19:57
Speaker 3: and they use ultra violet photography and digital photography and
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Speaker 3: black and white photography, and they use very very precise
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Speaker 3: dental molds, and they use dental materials that are highly
20:09
Speaker 3: highly accurate. All that's very impressive, it's just totally meaningless.
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Speaker 3: There's massive distinction between collecting data and interpreting data and
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Speaker 3: what a lot of junk science relies on a very
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Speaker 3: very precise and impressive methods of collecting data and very
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Speaker 3: very light on interpreting the data.
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Speaker 2: And so the evidence of these so called expert odentologists
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Speaker 2: sound strong because of all the jargon and technology, and
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Speaker 2: in our society we're told to trust people in white
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Speaker 2: lab codes, and these guys, these odentologists, really do appear
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Speaker 2: to be experts.
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Speaker 3: When an expert witness gets on the stand, they don't
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Speaker 3: just start testifying, Right, what's the first thing that they do?
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Speaker 4: Right?
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Speaker 3: You go through their credentials cvs that are over twenty
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Speaker 3: pages long, apearances on sixty minutes presentations at the American
21:02
Speaker 3: Academy of Forensic Sciences. This board membership, that board membership.
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Speaker 3: The credentials are off the.
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Speaker 2: Chain, right, So the jury hears all of these impressive credentials,
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Speaker 2: and why should they dispute it, And suddenly they start
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Speaker 2: believing that these so called experts must know what they're
21:21
Speaker 2: talking about, that they're presenting solid scientific fact.
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Speaker 3: It takes a very very critical thinker and independent thinker
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Speaker 3: not to be lulled into a sense of, you know,
21:34
Speaker 3: addicating your responsibility. And there's always two strikes against any
21:39
Speaker 3: defendant that walks into criminal court and is on trial
21:42
Speaker 3: you know, most of the people in the courtroom believe
21:44
Speaker 3: that he or she is guilty already, the bias that
21:48
Speaker 3: most Americans walk into court with with the idea that
21:52
Speaker 3: the person that is on trial is guilty as charged.
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Speaker 2: Chris, I've heard of so many convictions where bitemark evidence
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Speaker 2: was used to gain the conviction and it was later
22:06
Speaker 2: proven that the injuries weren't even human bites at all.
22:10
Speaker 2: They were things like insect bites and animal bites or
22:14
Speaker 2: you know, bruises, something else entirely.
22:17
Speaker 3: One of the fundamental claims by bitemark experts, these forensic dentists,
22:23
Speaker 3: is that they, through their training and experience, have the
22:27
Speaker 3: ability to discern a human bitemark from other types of injuries.
22:32
Speaker 3: What we can say in science is that if experts
22:35
Speaker 3: look at the same evidence and largely come to similar
22:38
Speaker 3: the same conclusions, there's some reliability in the technique. And
22:43
Speaker 3: there was a study that was done about four years ago,
22:47
Speaker 3: and what this was was a survey of the self
22:50
Speaker 3: identified top forensic dentists in the country. It was about
22:53
Speaker 3: forty of them, and they did a survey of one
22:56
Speaker 3: hundred different injuries and they wanted to see if there
22:58
Speaker 3: are inter raidar liability.
23:01
Speaker 2: So when a bunch of vote intelligences looked at different
23:03
Speaker 2: kinds of injuries, did they agree about whether or not
23:06
Speaker 2: they were looking at photographs of human bite marks?
23:09
Speaker 3: These top bite mark experts in the country, they were
23:13
Speaker 3: all over the place. So even just as a threshold matter,
23:17
Speaker 3: as we're talking about what's a bitemark and what isn't
23:19
Speaker 3: a bite mark, it's junk science at that level too.
23:23
Speaker 2: This study should have been the end of bite mark
23:25
Speaker 2: evidence and courtrooms in this country, right, I mean, why
23:28
Speaker 2: wasn't it?
23:29
Speaker 3: It depends on really, you know, do you want the
23:30
Speaker 3: cynical answer or do you want the long term answer.
23:32
Speaker 3: The cynical answer is that courts don't care. Any tool
23:35
Speaker 3: that is used successfully to prosecute indigent defendants in our
23:41
Speaker 3: criminal justice system is almost always going to be available
23:46
Speaker 3: to the prosecution and continue to be available to the
23:49
Speaker 3: prosecution once it's become admissible in the first place, and
23:52
Speaker 3: it's almost impossible to unwind it and to walk back
23:56
Speaker 3: all that legal precedent. The prosecutors have a duty to
23:58
Speaker 3: do justice, and that part of that to be never
24:00
Speaker 3: using unreliable evidence in the case.
24:03
Speaker 4: But that's not the way it's done. Once it's amissible.
24:05
Speaker 3: The prosecutors are going to continue to fight for its
24:07
Speaker 3: admissibility because it's useful to get convictions.
24:10
Speaker 2: Right. The prosecutor who says, you know what, I feel
24:14
Speaker 2: uncomfortable presenting a case that is built on junk science
24:19
Speaker 2: is unfortunately the exception to the rule, and a very
24:24
Speaker 2: rare exception at that. And I think what our listeners
24:27
Speaker 2: need to understand is that prosecutors are often told go
24:32
Speaker 2: get a conviction, and what matters to them is the win,
24:36
Speaker 2: and the mentality is when it all costs, even if
24:41
Speaker 2: it means presenting information that is known to be unscientific, unreliable, unsubstantiated,
24:49
Speaker 2: including bitemark evidence. At the beginning of this episode, I
25:08
Speaker 2: asked you to imagine yourself accused of a murder. The
25:12
Speaker 2: victim had bitemarks all over their body. The prosecution brought
25:16
Speaker 2: out a parade of experts. They presented what sounded like
25:20
Speaker 2: unimpeachable scientific fact. You're sitting there knowing that you're innocent,
25:27
Speaker 2: yet these so called facts about bitemarks are being used
25:30
Speaker 2: to turn a jury against you. These supposed experts are
25:34
Speaker 2: still being used to wrongly convict people all over the country.
25:40
Speaker 2: There are people sitting on death row right now whose
25:44
Speaker 2: cases are based on the junk signs of bitemark evidence.
25:48
Speaker 2: The good news is that lawyers like Chris Fabricaon are
25:52
Speaker 2: working with the Innocence Project to overturn cases that are
25:55
Speaker 2: based on bitemark evidence.
25:57
Speaker 3: Our objectives were was to eliminate the use of bite
26:01
Speaker 3: mark evidence generally, which you know, sadly we still have
26:04
Speaker 3: an accomplished that goal, but also defines the many, many
26:07
Speaker 3: victims of this junk science and that are still incarcerated
26:11
Speaker 3: around the country. You know, we still have five different
26:13
Speaker 3: cases that we're working on right now with people that
26:16
Speaker 3: are in prison and on death row. We have two
26:19
Speaker 3: death row clients and one case that's about to go
26:22
Speaker 3: to trial in another capital case in Pennsylvania that's also
26:25
Speaker 3: you know, trying to use bite mark evidence.
26:28
Speaker 2: The wheels of justice grind slowly, but there is hope
26:32
Speaker 2: Chris's attempt to eliminate bitemark evidence from our criminal justice
26:37
Speaker 2: system is indeed paying off. One of Chris's clients, Shila Denton,
26:43
Speaker 2: who was wrongfully convicted based on bite mark evidence, was
26:47
Speaker 2: released from prison this past April.
26:49
Speaker 3: Sheila Denton was convicted fifteen years ago for the homicide
26:55
Speaker 3: of a drug dealer in Georgia. The state's theory was
27:00
Speaker 3: that Sheila Denton, who's you know, weighed in about one
27:03
Speaker 3: hundred and ten hundred and fifteen pounds, had manually strangled
27:07
Speaker 3: this crack dealer who's maybe about one hundred and eighty
27:10
Speaker 3: pounds man, and there was an injury on her arm,
27:14
Speaker 3: and there was an injury on the victim's arm. The
27:18
Speaker 3: forensic dentist in the case, a guy named Tom David,
27:20
Speaker 3: said it was probable that Sheila Denton had bitten the victim,
27:24
Speaker 3: and it was also probable that the victim had bitten
27:27
Speaker 3: Sheila Denton, and that was essentially the only evidence in
27:30
Speaker 3: the case. So Sheila Denton was fairly quickly convicted.
27:33
Speaker 2: But when the case was overturned, Chris was able to
27:36
Speaker 2: convince not only the judge but also the odentologists who
27:40
Speaker 2: testified for the prosecution that bitemark evidence is nothing but
27:44
Speaker 2: junk science.
27:46
Speaker 3: You know, for an expert who drank the kool aid
27:48
Speaker 3: for many years and has been declared an expert witness
27:51
Speaker 3: in courts around the country and takes a lot of
27:53
Speaker 3: personal and professional pride in the forensic identology practice, you know,
27:58
Speaker 3: I mean and busting bad guys asked apect of their
28:01
Speaker 3: civic duties to come to the realization that they were wrong,
28:06
Speaker 3: that everything that they had talked about and everything that
28:09
Speaker 3: they believed in was bullshit. That's very, very powerful, and
28:12
Speaker 3: you need more of that in forensics.
28:18
Speaker 2: You might be wondering how you can help besides being
28:22
Speaker 2: a more critical and informed jour The Innocence Projects Policy
28:26
Speaker 2: Department works in all fifty states to pass laws that
28:30
Speaker 2: facilitate releasing innocent people from prison and preventing wrongful convictions.
28:35
Speaker 2: Sign up for their newsletter so you can see the
28:38
Speaker 2: policies that are being proposed in your community. There's an
28:42
Speaker 2: expression that I like to use in wrongful incarceration cases,
28:46
Speaker 2: which is that pressure breaks pipes. These exonerations don't come easy.
28:52
Speaker 2: They're usually the result of a grueling fight, and your
28:56
Speaker 2: voice matters. What I mean by that is, make noise
29:01
Speaker 2: about the junk science of bitemark evidence. Write a letter
29:04
Speaker 2: to your local criminal court judges about how inaccurate it is.
29:08
Speaker 2: Send them articles about its flaws. Write an op ed.
29:12
Speaker 2: Judges are human, they can be persuaded, and you have
29:16
Speaker 2: the power to help change their minds by speaking up.
29:20
Speaker 2: You have learned from this episode, how dangerous one case,
29:24
Speaker 2: one legal precedent can be in infecting our system of
29:28
Speaker 2: justice with junk science. All it takes is one more
29:32
Speaker 2: to write that wrong. And if you wind up as
29:35
Speaker 2: a juror in a criminal case and you find yourself
29:38
Speaker 2: presented with something that is touted as science, ask tough
29:42
Speaker 2: questions of your fellow jurors when you're deliberating. Approach it
29:46
Speaker 2: with a healthy degree of skepticism. Demand answers to tough
29:50
Speaker 2: questions if something doesn't make sense, Give the defendant the
29:55
Speaker 2: benefit of the doubt. After all, isn't that what the
29:58
Speaker 2: presumption of innocence is all about. If you do that,
30:03
Speaker 2: if you demand real proof beyond a reasonable doubt and
30:07
Speaker 2: it doesn't meet that standard, you might just prevent the
30:11
Speaker 2: next wrongful conviction. Next week, we'll explore the junk signs
30:21
Speaker 2: of blood spatter analysis with award winning journalist Pamela Koloff
30:25
Speaker 2: from Pro Publica and The New York Times. Pam has
30:28
Speaker 2: written extensively about this kind of evidence. As part of
30:32
Speaker 2: her research, she actually became a certified blood spatter analyst.
30:39
Speaker 2: Wrongful Conviction Junk Science is a production of Lava for
30:42
Speaker 2: Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number One. Thanks
30:46
Speaker 2: to our executive producer Jason Flahm and the team at
30:49
Speaker 2: Signal Company Number One executive producer Kevin Wardis and senior
30:53
Speaker 2: producers Karen Kornhaber and Brit Spangler. Our music was composed
30:58
Speaker 2: by Jay Ralph. You can follow me on Instagram at
31:01
Speaker 2: dubin dot Josh. Follow the Wrongful Conviction podcast on Facebook
31:06
Speaker 2: and on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Twitter at
31:09
Speaker 2: wrong Conviction